Housekeeping

July 3, 2013

[Note: I originally posted on blogspot.com, then at my personal site, K5DE.net; posts have migrated over time to here]

I have been doing some housekeeping to this long neglected blog. Times like these, I’m not sure how smart it was to move the blog from a blog hosting site — in my case, mississippiramblings.blogspot.com — to be able to have “complete control.” Complete control requires a fair amount of site maintenance, particularly since I didn’t want to load a blog platform, which would also lock me into their way of doing things. I didn’t think that was much better than having it on a hosted site. But it does add extra work when posting.

Took off from work this week, trying to get a few days away. “Away” is the key word, as I still spend part of every day dealing with work issues. I’ve forgotten what it is like to have a vacation where you actually didn’t have to worry about your work-life. Ah, well, it pays the bills.

I have been getting a little bit of stuff done. I decided to take this morning to rework this site. I probably broke some things that I’ll run across later, but the reality is the site is a place for me. I’ve often thought about just doing it on my iMac, where I could really “ramble” with no punches pulled, might be more stress relief that way. But I guess I’ll continue to post the watered down versions here.

Yesterday my son and I painted a garden cart we have been building off and on for awhile. I think we’ll get it finished this week, which involves another coat of paint (green – we’ll probably call the cart The Hulk), the protective metal pieces to be added, then the axle and wheel installation. May not finish, though, as we have weekend plans that start Friday and pretty much finish out the weekend.

Also I’ve been playing around some on my amateur radio equipment. I’ve started making a lot of JT65 contacts (a digital exchange mode for weak signal work), and being weak signal it allowed me to add several countries to my countries worked list. I’m currently two states short of my “worked all state” claim (Alaska and Montana) but way short of the 100 country award. I’ve also been working some to pull my morse code capabilities back to par — or, at least, closer to par. A lot of work to do there before I’m very comfortable doing CW very much.

Lastly, I think I’ll start back on the novel I began back in 1978. Okay, one page back then, but still the genesis lies that far back. I keep thinking I want to make it happen, but the “ass in chair” and typing is not a thrill-a-minute, and I expect it will end up nothing more than a labor of love (i.e., not a payoff in the end). But I would like to say I completed it, which won’t happen unless I get past the ass in chair and type portion. Heck, this post is a few hundred words that would have went in that direction, so with that I’ll call it quits on this post. See ya around, world; don’t be a stranger.